Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (35 page)

Read Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America Online

Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
10.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The English party continued upstream to the populous settlement of Matchcot, where they found 400 warriors, “well appointed with their bowes and arrowes,” who dared the men to come ashore. The soldiers had no wish to look cowardly, “so ashoare we went, our best landing being up a high steepe hill.” A tense standoff followed while the two enemies assessed each other’s strengths and weaknesses. A clash seemed inevitable until Pocahontas stepped ashore to defuse the situation. She also passed on the message to the Indians that “if her father had loved her he would not value her lesse then old swordes, peeces or axes,” and that unless Powhatan complied with Dale’s request, “she should still dwell with the English men who loved her.”
The Indians continued to taunt their English foes, telling them that “they were there ready to defend themselves if we pleased to assault them.” But Dale refused to rise to the bait, for he was genuine in his desire to negotiate Pocahontas’s release. He informed the chieftains that he intended to play by the rules, “assuring them till
the next day, by noone, we would not molest, hurt nor detaine any of them, and then before we fought, our drum and trumpets should give them warning.”
During this uneasy standoff, Dale received an important delegation: “Two of Powhatan’s sonnes, being very desirous to see their sister, who was there present ashoore with us, came unto us; at the sight of whom, and her wellfare … they much rejoyced.” They assured Dale that they were tired of the continual bloodshed and promised “that they would undoubtedly perswade their father to redeeme her and to conclude a firme peace forever with us.” Shortly afterwards, Powhatan’s brother also arrived at Dale’s camp with much the same message. “[He] promised us his best indeavors to further our just requests.”
It suddenly dawned on Dale that he was being presented with a unique opportunity to make peace with Powhatan. His visitors seemed genuine enough in their desire for an end to the hostilities, and Dale was in possession of the one person—Pocahontas—who could secure a truce. Aware that matters of war and peace could only be decided by the emperor, he selected two emissaries—Master Sparkes and John Rolfe—and sent them to Powhatan with orders to negotiate an end to almost eight years of conflict.
The events that followed are as bizarre as they are confusing. The fragmentary records that survive leave many gaps in the story, but there is enough information to piece together what was, even by Jamestown’s standards, a quite extraordinary development. After Dale’s two negotiators set off into the forest, the governor was given the astonishing news that John Rolfe was in love with Pocahontas and had secretly proposed to marry her.
This was no passing fancy. “Long before this time,” recalled colonist Ralph Hamor, “Maister John Rolfe had bin in love with Pocahontas and she with him.” Rolfe had managed to keep their affair a secret—no mean feat in the tiny settlement of Jamestown—and the first that the governor learned of the romance was now, “at the instant that we were in parlee with them [the Indians].”
Rolfe had asked his old friend Hamor to break the news while he was away, aware that Dale was likely to explode with rage. He had also composed a long letter—to be given to the governor once he was deep in the forest—in which he attempted to persuade him of the benefits of their getting married. “I freely subject myselfe to your grave and mature judgement,” he wrote, “either perswadinge me to desist or encouraginge me to persist herein with a religious feare and godly care.” He need have looked no further for support than the writings of Sir Walter Ralegh, who had long believed in the value of mixed marriages, arguing that Indian men should be shipped to England, civilised, and then sent back to be paired off with English colonists. “[After] being civilled and converted heere,” he wrote, “upon there returne … they may be matched in marriage with English women.”
Rolfe chose a more personal line of argument, explaining to Dale that he had fought long and hard to control his passion, and that “my hart and best thoughtes are, and have byn a long tyme, soe intangled and inthralled in soe intricate a laborinth that I was even awearied to unwynde myselfe thereout.” He realised that marrying Pocahontas would be somewhat unconventional, and conceded that her “education hath byn rude, her manners barbarous [and] her generacion cursed.” These were not his only concerns. He knew that “the vulgar sorte” would taunt him with the jibe that he only wished to marry her “to gorge myselfe” on her female body.
The young lover listed dozens of reasons why Pocahontas was an unsuitable partner, allowing himself the briefest of paragraphs to explain the benefits of the match: “for the good of the plantacion, the honour of our countrye, for the glorye of God, for myne owne salvacion and for the convertinge to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ an unbelievinge creature, namely Pocahontas.”
Rolfe did not wait for Dale’s response before making his move. In the course of the peace negotiations with Powhatan, he decided to risk the governor’s wrath by asking for Pocahontas’s hand in marriage. The details are again obscure, and the official account—written
at a later date by Hamor—records only that “[news] of this pretended marriage came soone to Powhatan’s knowledge.” But there was no outburst or rash violence from the emperor, and no suggestion that he objected to the proposal. Indeed, Rolfe’s desire to marry his daughter was “a thing acceptable to him,” and he gave “his sudden consent thereunto.”
Dale would have had good reason to punish John Rolfe for acting with such presumption, and in any normal circumstance he would have probably had him executed. But his tyrannical temper was softened by the idea of a marriage alliance with the Indians. He had mulled over Rolfe’s letter and been unable to find any compelling reason why they should not be married, especially as Pocahontas had recently converted to Christianity. “[She] renounced publickly her countrey idolatry, openly confessed her Christian faith, [and] was, as she desired, baptised.” To Rolfe’s evident relief, the governor declared that he was “well approving of the match, [and] gave his consent.” He did so, he said, “for the good of the plantacion.”
The preparations for the wedding completely overshadowed the peace negotiations. This was not a time for the Indians and English to be fighting, and both sides immediately suspended hostilities—ostensibly so that they could plant their crops. A few of the more hawkish English troops felt they had been cheated of a fight, but most were relieved at the outcome and marched back to Jamestown to prepare the settlement for the first joyous celebration in years. The forthcoming wedding even softened the belligerent Powhatan; “[he] sent an olde uncle of hirs, named Opachisco, to give her as his deputy in the church, and two of his sonnes to see the mariage solemnized.”
The wedding, which took place on April 5, 1614, was performed by the Reverend Richard Buck, a “painfull [diligent] preacher” who had the dubious distinction of being father to “the first idiot born in that plantation.” The ceremony was an occasion of great joy, for both the English and the Indians, and was followed by the customary festivities. Dale was so delighted with the match that he allowed
a rare glimpse of good humour into his writing. “Her father and friends gave approbation to it,” he wrote, “and her uncle gave her to him in the church. She lives civilly and lovingly with him [Rolfe], and I trust will increase in goodness as the knowledge of God increaseth in her.”
The marriage proved to be the turning point in the colony’s fortunes. It prompted both Indian and English to draw back from the abyss of eternal warfare, and caused the two leaders to consider whether a lasting peace might better serve everyone’s interests. Dale showed an uncharacteristic reluctance to lead his troop back on the offensive, while Powhatan’s great age had exhausted his desire to fight. He had long ago realised that he had no hope of expelling the English from his land, and had no wish to spend his declining years watching his race slide into oblivion. He wrote a loving letter to Dale “desiring to be ever friends” and informing him that Pocahontas “should be [Dale’s] childe, and ever dwell with [him].” He also returned all of the English “peeces, swords and tooles,” which had for so long been a sticking point. Unbeknown to anyone, and unnoticed by Dale, this stash of weaponry included antiquated muskets and a brass mortar that predated the Jamestown settlement by almost twenty years.
Powhatan was anxious that the peace should apply not only to his own tribe but to those who fell under his indirect control. He now approached Dale and “named such of his people, and neighbouring kings, as he desired to be included and have the benefit of the peace.” He also promised that if any “of his men stole from us, or killed our cattel, he woulde send them to us to bee punished as we thought fit.”
This new truce was eagerly adopted by Powhatan’s extended family and subject kings. The first to agree to peace was his warlike half-brother, Opechancanough. He visited Dale and told him that he “desired I would call him friend, and that he might call me so, saying he was a great captaine and did alwaies fight; that I was also a great captaine and therefore he loved mee.” The chieftain excelled
himself in his generosity, sending parcels of food and victuals to Sir Thomas, “and every eight or ten daies I have messages and presents from him, with many apparances that he much desireth to continue friendshippe.”
Others quickly followed suit, and even the powerful Chickahominy tribe, for so long a thorn in the side of the English, decided that the time for hostility was over. They sent a message to Dale informing him that they “longed to be friends.” When he put them to the test by asking them “if they would have King James to be their King,” they readily assented, and with a great cry “pronounced themselves Englishmen.” Indeed, they were so keen to prove their loyalty that they expressed their desire “to become not only trusty friends, but even King James’s subjects and tributaries.” After a hastily arranged vote, they changed their tribal name to
Tossantessas
—a distortion of the Indian word for
English
. Henceforth they were to be known as “new Englishmen.”
The colonists were astonished by the turn of events brought about by Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas. A long and extremely bloody chapter was at last coming to a close, and peace now seemed a real possibility. Ralph Hamor concluded his account by informing his readers that the surprise marriage had brought “friendly commerce and trade, not onely with Powhatan himselfe, but also with his subjects round about us.” He saw no reason, he said, “why the collonie should not thrive a pace.”
Even Sir Thomas Dale was cautiously optimistic. He listed the many dividends that he expected peace to bring: “our catell to increase without danger of destroying; our men at libertie to hunt freely for venison; to fish, to doe anything else or goe any whither without danger.” Aware that Pocahontas was “the knot to binde this peace the stronger,” he was even able to foresee a time when the Indians—“as we grow in familiaritie with them”—would become friends.
Dale resigned his post in the spring of 1616 and set sail for England, taking with him John Rolfe, Pocahontas—whose name had been Christianised to Rebecca—and their infant son, Thomas. Their visit was a stroke of genius on the part of Dale, for not only did it afford the Virginia Company invaluable publicity for their colony, but it also offered tangible proof of the peace that now existed between the English and the Indians.
 
Peace brought rich dividends for the English, and Sir Thomas Dale anticipated the time when the Indians, “as we grow in familiaritie with them,” would become friends
The timing could not have been better, for the pace of colonisation had slowed down over recent months, and political manoeuvrings had led to a number of adventurers’ dropping out of the Company. Now, with a civilised savage in town, the London merchants were able to refute, once and for all, the charge that Virginia was a land peopled by barbarians.
Dale’s vessel anchored at Plymouth and Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe continued on their journey by stagecoach. They were accompanied by a retinue of a dozen Indians—Pocahontas’s “court”—led by her brother-in-law, Tomocomo, who had been given strict instructions by Powhatan to make a mental record of everything of interest. He was also ordered to count the population of England by cutting a notch into his “long sticke” every time he saw a new face. Poor Tomocomo tried to fulfil this latter request, but he had scarcely left Plymouth harbour before “his arithmetike fayled” and his stick had been whittled down to a handful of wood shavings. “He was,” noted John Smith wryly, “quickly weary of that taske.”
The journey to London was one of considerable discomfort, not made any easier by the fact that the merchants of the Virginia Company had given the party an extremely ungenerous allowance of just “fowre pound a weeke.” Nor did they show any courtesy towards their distinguished visitors. Unlike Sir Walter Ralegh, who had taken Manteo first to Hampton Court and then to Durham House—his own home—the merchants hired cheap rooms in a tawdry alehouse. One company wag booked them into the Belle Sauvage Inn of Ludgate Hill, to the probable mirth of his colleagues. The owner of the tavern, Mr. Sauvage, quickly capitalised on the fame of his exotic guests and replaced his pub sign with a portrait of Pocahontas.

Other books

Fudge Cupcake Murder by Fluke, Joanne
Higher Ground by Nan Lowe
Echo by Alyson Noël
Play My Game by J. Kenner
Almost Forever by Linda Howard
Monica by Cd Reiss